It was a long road back to soundness for Quimero, but the result was worth it, as he and owner Megan Georges won both Grand Prix classes at the Houston Dressage Society’s Spring Classic I and II shows, held May 5-6 in Katy, Texas.

The 12-year-old, gray Lusitano gelding foundered in November 2003, about three days after a flu/rhino vaccine. “He had sole penetration” in both front feet, Georges said. “He had a tenotomy that cut the deep digital flexor tendon on both fronts to ease the pressure on the coffin bone,” she explained. “Then they reset his feet—got the heels up way high.” Eventually, with appropriate shoeing, new hoof growth grew the coffin bone back into place.

“The key was rehabilitation,” Georges said. The gelding had three months of stall rest after surgery,
then six months more of rehab work. Until this year, she shipped Quimero more than three hours each way for shoeing, with x-rays before and after each shoeing to make sure each shoe was properly placed. This year they’re doing well with just a local specialist farrier.

“I’d shown Intermediaire II for the first time right when he got sick,” Georges said. When they returned to the show ring in 2005, they went back to Intermediare I, then did some Intermediare II last year. This is their first year at Grand Prix, and only their second show, and so far they’ve won all their classes.

Right now their goal is to “get better at the Grand Prix test, and try for Regional [Championships] next year,” said Georges. “We’ve got a long way to go—when he thinks he knows the test better than me, he starts leading the dance a little.”

Quimero was bred in Alabama, and Georges has owned him since he was 2. He’s her first Grand Prix horse, and the Austin-based professional has done all his training herself. She spent a few years trailering for three hours to the Dallas area every weekend for lessons with Sabine Schut-Kery. It’s a “lot of years and effort,” she said.

“He also does tricks,” she said. “He bows, does the Spanish walk, and the levade.” The pair were also movement-capture models for a horse-related video game, and were in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Parade one year.

Also on the comeback trail were the runners-up in both Grand Prix classes, Kristin Stringer and Primaner. “I came back from [having] twins, and he came back from colic surgery,” Stringer said. This was the pair’s
second show of the year and their second year at Grand Prix.

Primaner, or Primo to his friends, is a 16-year-old Hanoverian gelding, and Stringer has done all his training. She gets help from Houston-area professional Fran Dearing. “I got him in Germany when he was 3,” she said of the chestnut. “He was scary when I got him—he was a lot of horse. He could barely walk, trot, and canter. Our original goal was to stay in the arena.”

Houston-based Stringer was also the top adult amateur in the Grand Prix classes, and she’s the classic amateur. “I juggle three little kids and a job,” she said. She rides only four days a week so she can work the other three days, and rides before Primo’s breakfast on weekend mornings to fit everything in.

Hooked On Dressage
Junior Elisabeth Steel fit in the ride of her life Saturday; she wowed the judges aboard Caramello 7, earning a 70 percent for third level, test 3, junior/young rider and Saturday’s third level cham-pionship. The pair also won Sunday’s third level, test 3, junior/young rider class. The high school junior had only shown as high as third level, test 1, once last year, and this was their first show this year.

Steel got into horses via western riding and 4-H when her family lived in Wyoming, then got involved in Pony Club and eventing after moving to the Austin, Texas area.

Then “I got hooked on dressage,” she said, and now does only that. “I’m trying to get my bronze medal,” she said, “and I’d like to get involved in some of the Young Rider stuff.” She also hopes to qualify for regional championships at third level.

Caramello 7 is a 9-year-old imported Trakehner Steel has had for a couple of years. “He’s so much fun,” she said.

Steel had been competing at first level on an Arabian when her family bought Caramello a few years ago. Steel described Caramello as “pretty solidly through Prix St. Georges,” when her family bought him. “He’s tough—he won’t give it to you unless you really want it,” she said. “But he’s really helped me learn. I can make mistakes and he’s not going to freak out.”

Rachel Campbell and her Hanoverian gelding Wandango swept the FEI Young Riders Team test class and Sunday’s FEI Young Riders Prix St. Georges class. Campbell won last year’s USEF Dressage Seat Medal Finals and was successful at the FEI Junior level; now she’s moved up to the Young Rider level.

A New Career
Another rider who’s gotten hooked on dressage is Austin hunter/jumper trainer Manda Martinek. She and her Paint gelding Cadence won both days’ open first level, test 4 classes, won the reserve champion high point award for first level on Saturday, and took second and third at second level, test 2.

Cadence is 9, and a registered Paint horse one of Martinek’s clients bought as a hunter prospect. “He was going great,” Martinek said. “We started in dressage to help his jumping. He was jumping and landing really heavily on his forehand.”

Martinek, who grew up in Austin riding hunters and then turned professional, got hooked on dressage at the same time. “I saw [Anky van Grunsven’s Olympic gold medalist] Salinero on the Olympics [telecast] and said, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to try that,’ ” she recalled.

She brought Cadence to Austin dressage trainer Grace Harris, who “really liked him,” Martinek said. “I bought him out from my client. [I decided] I wanted him for my dressage horse.” No one at the dressage shows believes he’s a registered paint, she said. “Everyone thinks he’s a warmblood.”

She still jumps him some, and he’s done a couple of endurance rides. “They’re good for his brain,” she said. “He loves the endurance—he gets on the trail and just canters.”

The pair have been moving up the dressage levels, even though some of his early hunter training has to be worked around a bit. “Counter-canter’s been hard,” she said. “He’s so automatic with lead changes.”

Dressage has been good for him, though. “I have to revamp my [first level] freestyle,” Martinek said. “We’re not on rhythm with the music because he’s changed so much.”

Now the pair are qualified for regional championships at first level, and first level freestyle, and Martinek is looking forward to going for the first time. “I’ve never been—I always had a hunter conflict.”

She’s hoping to show more at second level in the fall, and then move on. “It’d be really cool to get to FEI [levels],” she said. “Hardly any paints make it that far.”

Making a successful debut was freshly-imported 4-year-old mare Lona. Catherine Mahon showed the chestnut Hanoverian for owner Louise Thompson to the training level reserve championship Saturday, and won the USEF 4-Year-Old Test on Sunday.

Thompson has only owned Lona since the end of February. Mahon took her to her very first outing, a local schooling show, in April. “We did training 1 and the 4-year-old test, just for practice,” Mahon said.

Lona was “raised on a small farm in Germany,” Mahon said. “She knew walk/trot/ canter— they’d done a really good job starting her well.”

She also “has an exceptional temperament,” Mahon said. “I couldn’t even lunge her the first day [at the show] – I got on and she was perfect.”

Thompson, an Austin-based adult amateur, has been riding Lona at home too. “She loves to work,” she said. “Even when she spooks, it’s not a disaster. She’s really pretty unflappable.”

The pair were so surprised by their success, they haven’t really thought about future showing plans for the mare. “We’ll keep doing the 4-year-old, and maybe try out first level,” Mahon said. “It seems to come really easy for her. She stayed really relaxed and swinging in her back.”

Austin-based professional Mahon also debuted her own Dutch gelding, Silhouet, at Prix St. Georges. She’s working on her silver medal and aiming him at the new Prix St. Georges for 7-9-year-old horses for next year, when he’ll be 9. “He’ll do better next year because he’ll be really seasoned,” she said.

Lois Mermelstein